Rattle and Kožená: Together for music

Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Sir Simon Rattle, conductor
Magdalena Kožená, mezzo soprano

Antonín Dvorák
Scherzo capriccioso, Op. 66

Gustav Mahler
Rückert-Lieder for voice and orchestra

Béla Bartók
Five Hungarian Folksongs, SZ 33

Franz Schubert
Symphony No. 9 in C major, D 944 The Great

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) was founded in 1981 by a group of young musicians who had met through the European Community Youth Orchestra (now EUYO). Today, the EOC's sixty-odd members pursue parallel careers as conductors or leaders of national orchestras, eminent chamber musicians and music teachers.

Is it important for the works on a concert bill to relate to each other to form a single overall idea? Certainly not when it comes to the pieces included in this splendid concert, which are nonetheless imbued with a general sense of beauty and lyricism.

The cycle of five Mahler songs entitled Rückert-Lieder can be performed in any order, and there is no clear motivation for their composition. They are echoed by Béla Bartók's Five Hungarian Folksongs, also sung by Magdalena Kožená under Simon Rattle at the head of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Dvorák's Capriccioso Scherzo and Schubert's symphonic masterpiece, the Great Symphony No. 9, open and close the programme: a listening experience that opens with an atmosphere of magical evocation and builds to a kind of apotheosis.

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